


WCKD Knight

by Tattered_Dreams



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: 11!Verse, Gen, Janson has a new job, Janson is a piece of work, Janson pov, Mentions of Violence, Post TST, WCKD make plans, a grade a prick, also quite paranoid, gap fic, he's a creep what's new, he's obsessed with Thomas, implied Minho/Aris, implied thomas/newt, minaris, movie-verse, newtmas - Freeform, we're in his head - what do you expect?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-16 09:22:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14161704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tattered_Dreams/pseuds/Tattered_Dreams
Summary: -Movie-verse, post Scorch Trials, Gap fic-Thomas isn't the only one starting to plan after Minho is captured on the Mountain. WCKD have their own plans to make, too.“You will be playing a vital role in what is to come. They are in your hands Janson,” she says gravely. “Do not fail a second time.”Janson's pov.





	1. Janson is assigned a new job

The gun is still warm in Janson’s hand as the berg lifts into the night sky.

His fingers are rigid around the grip, and he’s breathing through gritted teeth, the pressure making his jaw ache. The tight feeling of rage burning through his veins is drowned out only by the muffled, disharmonious protests of the kids crushed in around the floor. It’s making a headache pulse behind his eyes and he can feel the tick start up in his trigger finger.

“Teresa, Janson, with me,” Ava says.

She turns and strides away from the rear door, heading straight down the centre of the transporter. Her boots echo on the floor grates. She’s impeccably white and spotless, shockingly out of place surrounded by mountain ash, gunmetal and blood. Her tone brooks no disagreement.

The girl – Teresa – hesitates. She’s pale; her eyes are blown wide, eerily blue under the strobe lights inside the plane, but she swallows, turns and moves after Ava without a word or a backward glance.

The pulse in Janson’s head tugs. His index finger is pressed so firmly into the trigger guard of his gun that he can feel the shape carving into his flesh. He releases a controlled breath and follows. There’s a certain delight in the way the kids clustered together in groups on the floor flinch away from him as he passes.

About time they learned to stay put and be quiet. He toed the line and played the amicable safe house host before, even though it grated at his skin and left him with a throbbing headache. He doesn’t have to do that anymore.

Now they can fear him.

.

There isn’t exactly privacy in the berg.

Instead, Janson stands with his back to the main hold as Ava, the girl and himself cluster up front in the domed cockpit. He shoots the pilot a glance, but clearly he’s well paid – his eyes stay straight ahead and a huge set of headphones are firmly in place over his ears.

“This was a victory today,” Ava tells them, but her voice is grave. “We gained back a lot of what was lost, but we cannot afford to rest now. There is much still to be done. And Thomas is still out there.”

Teresa stiffens, her eyes flashing across to Ava’s.

The older woman spares her a glance of cool sympathy. “Teresa…I’m sorry. I know what you asked, and of course I don’t want any harm to come to him. But we have to be realistic. He won’t just let this go. We need to prepare for the likelihood that he will be looking to retaliate.”

“So what would you have us do?” Janson asks.

The conflict twists inside the cage of his ribs; hot and cold, aggravated and gnawing. He’d quite cheerfully murder the boy. He’s more trouble than he’s worth; more resourceful than Janson had anticipated, and he detests being outmanoeuvred, perhaps more than he hates being disobeyed. But he’s well aware that voicing this particular bloodlust wouldn’t land favourably in this audience.

The girl is still soft on him and Ava, for reasons Janson has never been privy to, favours him.

He might have been able to explain away how Thomas ended up with a bullet in his brain in the midst of a gunfight on a darkened mountainside, but not this. Suggesting they drop a bomb on the remains of the Right Arm could jeopardise his own good standing. It’s not a risk that’s worth the potential cost. Not yet.

So with the option of offering to wipe Thomas off the face of the planet gone he’s intrigued what Ava’s suggestion will be.

“The first thing is to abandon the Scorch Facility,” Ava says.

Janson blinks but is careful to keep his face impassive.

It’s a bold move.

The Scorch facility is one of just three WCKD bases set up outside of Denver and the Maze compounds. They were built back when the Trials were in development and funding was used to prepare for the eventuality that the subjects would find their way out. That particular one is their primary headquarters; the medical staff and equipment concentrated there, as well as it being large enough to accommodate all the subjects. It’s the most heavily fortified and rural enough that any escapees shouldn’t have been able to survive away from them.

The reminder that not only had Thomas led a whole group to not just survive but thrive and even join the Right Arm is a sharp stab between Janson’s ribs.

He hates the boy.

“Abandon?” Teresa asks, somewhere between confused and shocked.

Her eyes flick to Janson as though wondering if this was something he’d known. Janson makes a point to never betray when he’s been kept _out_ of the loop. He keeps his gaze fixed stonily on Ava.

Teresa turns back to the older woman. “But…where else can we go? We have sixty kids here. They might be in shock right now but it won’t last and I know that some of them won’t just sit and wait for us to find somewhere.”

Teresa glances back and Janson feels a tick return to his jaw. He throws a look over his shoulder too, easily finding what she’s looking at.

It’s the boy – A7 – _Minho_.

Abstractly Janson finds it interesting the way that resentment and satisfaction both roil in his gut.

The boy is still twitching, body shaky with the after effects of the voltage shot. He’s crumpled by the rear door of the berg, his head in another kid’s lap and a blonde girl crouched beside them. Janson dislikes knowing it, but Teresa is right – as soon as the last of the current leaves him, adrenaline will kick in. He’d be easy to subdue if Janson could just put a bullet in him – but Ava values her precious children far too much.

Not a risk he can take, he reminds himself. Not yet.

“No, they won’t,” Ava agrees, and Janson snaps his head back around. She’s also thrown a look over to the group by the door. “Some of them have proved far more capable than I ever imagined. Teresa, get the medics to start administering the sedatives – I promise, they’re safe. It’s best for everyone to keep them all calm. They’re in shock and they’ve been through a lot. We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Teresa seems to hesitate for just the barest fraction of a second, but Ava’s calm words set a firm resolve into the younger girl’s eyes. She nods briskly, turning and striding off to where three WCKD scientists are strapped into seats between armed guards. They all look up as Teresa approaches, backs straightening.

Teresa is young still, and having been on the move for weeks, she looks more like she’s with the subjects than with WCKD. Her hair is a tangle, the coat she’s wearing is too large, just catching her shoulders and her boots are scuffed.

But the scientists pivot to face her with alert expressions.

They know who she is. That’s…interesting.

Janson was never at the Maze compound but Teresa clearly had a role to play, and she has Ava’s favour. She could be a useful friend to make.

For now he turns his back on her again. There will be time for that. For this moment – the berg still cruising through the night sky to the thrumming sounds of engines and rotor blades, the muffled array of voices from the kids – Janson has more pressing concerns.

Ava is speaking into a radio transmitter, contacting the pilot of their remaining helicopter. Its most likely to indicate a destination or see that they stay alert so nothing else can cause setbacks. The entire past two weeks have been a setback.

And its one caused by a boy only barely still in his teen years that is now resulting in the evacuation of their prime research base.

Janson wants to grind his teeth again but as Ava cuts the radio transmission he takes his chance to question further.

“And what of the next steps then?” he asks. “Drug them up so they’re quiet. Abandon the Scorch facility…do you have a plan for that?”

“A plan?”

She’s asking in that even, fathomless voice that tells Janson she wants him to fill the blank. It’s always a dangerous game. Suggest something too extreme and it puts him on unstable ground. He considers it, ponders the answer she’d want.

Science. Science and the children. That’s always been her angle. She wants to save the world.

There’s not enough of the world left to bother with.

“All of the equipment needed to extract serum from these kids is at that facility. So is most of the trained workforce. Not to mention another 50 subjects still in harvest. How exactly do you want to manage the…discontinuation of that base?”

That feels safe.

Ava doesn’t reply for a moment, but her expression is level, considering as she turns and gazes out of the cockpit.

The skyline beyond is dark but clear, the vast planes of the scorch bleached blue in the night. The crumbling, destroyed remains of an entire civilisation are just shadows far below them. The berg is a steady hum of engines and power, the inside lit up. It moves smoothly despite its speed, feels like standing on stable ground.

“We’ll arrange for transporters to lift out the equipment,” Ava says into the waiting silence. “As much as we can. It can be stored for the time being at the training facility. All the staff can be relocated; some will stay with the equipment to continue running their tests. Some will be sent on to the kids. This has been a setback but our sponsors are demanding results, especially now that Denver is almost fully fortified.

“As for the children there…” Ava heaves a sigh and her eyes drop for a moment. “The ones in harvest…I’m afraid that is a far trickier circumstance. They will need to be terminated. It’s regrettable, but my informants tell me their serum reserves are running out already and there is no longer the time we need.”

Janson doesn’t bother asking if the comatose state was ever intended to be recoverable. He doesn’t care. That’s 50 less brats to deal with.

“The equipment relocated,” he drawls, following the plan over. “The staff split off to better serve the company, the subjects – regrettably – no longer viable. And the facility left as it is? What story will the sponsors be told?”

Ava doesn’t look at him, eyes still gazing off through the glass. The pilot still hasn’t given the barest sign he’s listening, gloved hands steady on the controls and eyes ahead. Janson might threaten him later anyway – fear is a better motivator than most things, he finds.

Behind them there is pained, weary scuffling and a hum of upset from the battle worn kids – the staff must be administering the drugs by now. Most of them are too stunned or injured to fight back, the others too scared.

“The sponsors will be told as much of the truth as possible.”

Janson feels his trigger finger itch again.

He keeps his tone carefully controlled, light, like the answer doesn’t matter. “That eight subjects were able to escape into the Scorch and evade the search teams for a fortnight?”

Ava tips her nose into the air. She doesn’t look at him but Janson is used to this. The hum of irritation that spreads through his nerves is muted, easily ignored for the time being.

“They escaped on your watch, Janson,” she reminds him.

That does spark a renewed fury. It’s not something he can forget. The burning defiance in the boy’s eyes as a security door closed between them. The way he’d flipped him off without shame or regret. Janson wants to break his fingers.

Ava shakes her head and Janson pulls himself forcibly away from the errant thoughts.

“However, you are more use to me in your position so for now it’s not something I feel the need to share.” Ava’s voice has a hint of delicacy to it, the way it often does when she talks about what not to tell their sponsors. She continues, “No. They will be told that the escape was a calculated risk orchestrated to expose the Right Arm and find subjects that were stolen from us. Abandoning the facility is self preservation with survivors still out there who know where it is. It is data and technology that cannot be allowed to fall into enemy hands.”

Finally she turns back to him, eyes fiercely on his own. Janson is taller than her, but he hates these moments. Her authority is absolute and inescapable and his height has never flustered her. He respects that as much as he wishes he could use it.

“I’ll send out the directives. This will be taken care off quickly. The Scorch facility will remain with a small skeleton staff and a guard unit to oversee its evacuation and then it will simply be abandoned. There may yet be a day we have need of it, but at this time the risk is too great.”

“Very well, Doctor Paige,” Janson says, though the words feel sour in his mouth. “That establishes that. But what of myself? And these children – is there a plan for them?”

Ava opens her mouth but before she can reply there’s a hoarse shout from behind them.

Janson wheels around, already lifting his gun and-

Of course.

A7 – Minho – is trying to lift himself up off the floor. He still looks unsteady; he can’t quite support his own weight right, but his face is twisted with desperate rage. His jaw locks, eyes narrow as he faces Teresa. They dart to the scientist hovering beside her holding an autoinjector and back again. Something about him seems to steady and solidify. There’s no fear in him; there isn’t room for it. He’s too angry.

This is where the adrenaline kicks in. It should have taken longer for that electric shot to wear off. Janson feels that realisation sting; it’s not just Thomas he has to never underestimate again.

Moving fast is now crucial.

“What’s going on over there?” he asks, striding down the centre of the berg. It’s an entirely rhetorical question – he can see easily enough – but he’s hoping to stall the events.

His voice carries easily and he lilts it with something passably amicable. Playing a genuinely understanding host to them all back in the Scorch had been annoying but he likes seeing the way people’s eyes cloud when he speaks to them this way. Affable people are some of the most infuriating and he has no problem using it.

He stops in front the group who all go still. The metal flooring rings beneath his boots, the sound of the rotors louder this close to the door. Minho’s eyes leap to him but they’re still fuzzy with everything his body has endured. Janson is a little disappointed. It takes away from the effect he wanted.

He would dearly love to point his gun at the boy and tell him to sit down, but he can feel Ava’s eyes trained on his back. Not yet.

Instead he finally holsters the Beretta. Better to remove the temptation, even if his hand feels empty without the warm, weighted metal. He gives Minho a frank look.

Adrenaline can do a lot, but in the kid it’s still fighting off a lot of factors; malnutrition and exhaustion being the least of it. This shouldn’t take long. Even if he was healthy, he’s also surrounded with nowhere to go. What could a teenaged boy possibly do on a berg high in the air?

“It’s really very easy,” Janson tells him. “We don’t want you to hurt yourself. You let us give you this and you don’t have to worry about another thing until you wake up. The ride will be quicker that way. Don’t do anything stupid.”

He’s not expecting Minho to choke out a _laugh_.

“Stupid?” he croaks. A shudder rips up his spine and both the blonde girl and the mousy boy behind him flick their eyes across the Korean subject with concern. “You’re the ones who did something stupid.”

“Min-“ the boy tries to warn him, but his voice is barely a whisper, terror shining in his eyes.

“Not now, Shank,” Minho tells him.

Janson is abruptly too busy recognising the other boy.

He’ll berate himself later for allowing the distraction, but he’s just placed the face.

They called him Aris – he’d been at the Scorch facility, keeping to himself for almost a week before Thomas had arrived. And then within two days he was gone. It was relatively easy to work out they’d used air vents after studying the security feeds, but there was still a lot Janson doesn’t know about what happened.

It would be good to get a chance to…question him about it.

Before that thought can derail into any actual plans, Minho steps into his view, blocking Aris and the girl with his still shaky body. Janson lifts his gaze, careful not to reveal he’s recognised the younger boy if he can help it.

“And what is it we did that’s so stupid in your eyes, _Minho_?”

There’s a spark of rage in Minho’s eyes, but it twists, churning into something like defiance even as Janson looks at him. There’s a storm inside this boy, one they created, allowed to become this destructive entity. He will need to be carefully watched.

“You left Thomas alive,” Minho says darkly. Promise and pride curl around the words. The berg is silent but for the steady hum of the engines, the strobe lights bright but cold white overhead. Everyone around them has fallen quiet and still – even those yet to be drugged.

Janson barely manages not to shudder. He cannot allow that, cannot show even the barest hint of a weakness. Still, he feels the rapid fire rush of stinging malice as well as something he refuses to call dread as it scrapes down his spine. He cannot let that on, but he will remember it.

He grits his teeth again and his gums ache as he tries to breathe down the irritation hot in his nerves.

“We don’t want to kill Thomas,” he finally says, when he is sure he can get the words out.

The lie tastes bitter. Ava might favour the boy but Janson is only sorry his bullet missed. All thanks to that girl – he doesn’t even know the one – a Scorch brat with a rifle she dared to train on him.

“You are all so important to the survival of the human race. We want to ensure you’re kept safe.”

“You want to save something,” Minho retorts. “But you’re not doing any of this to keep us safe.”

He’s had it. He’s absolutely had it. If he has to listen to another word he’s going to shoot the boy through the kneecap.

“Of course we are,” Janson says, and his voice is cold. “You’ve got yourselves all turned around but WCKD _is_ good. Let’s not fight.”

Guards are moving into place around them.

Minho may not have noticed – still struggling with the residue of electricity in his body. Or if he has, he simply refuses to look away from Janson. Maybe he knows he can’t win this fight so defiance is all he can wield.

Janson turns to the scientists, making note of Teresa’s pinched expression, the way her eyes are glassy and her fingers twitching under the edges of her sleeves. He addresses the man with the injector.

“Drug him.”

Minho flinches forwards. It’s not defensive or evasive; it’s a move to strike, to attack. He knows how to throw a punch but it’s easy to see coming, his form sloppy thanks to the damage he’s taken. He doesn’t even get to follow it through.

The next instant the guards are on him, restraining, pushing him to his knees on the grated floor and forcing his shoulders back even as he struggles hopelessly. There are a handful of sharp gasps from the kids clustered in the berg and the sound rises up like a whiplash.

“It’s for your safety,” Janson tells him.

Minho roars out, the sound torn and ragged in his throat, muscle quaking as he fights, but the guards have a solid grip on him. He can’t move as the scientist slips in close, presses the injector in his hand to Minho’s straining neck and presses down on the dispensing light.

There’s a brief sound, like the whoosh of air pressure and the light blinks twice. An electronic panel shows a bar collapsing fast as the device tracks the discharge of sedative. Within moments it’s gone. 

Minho’s eyes are dropping already, and he’s slumping down the second the guards let him go. Even still terrified, Aris lurches forwards to try to break the fall as the older boy’s body gives out. The blonde girl helps him.

Minho’s breathing shortens, coming in fits and starts. He’s fighting it, despite knowing it’s pointless. He glares dolefully up, probably can’t even see straight. Janson has to give him points for obstinacy even if it’s annoying.

Aris is pressed back into the wall of the berg, fingers curled tight into Minho’s jacket even as he’s given his own injection. The girl with them doesn’t let go of Aris’s arm as a scientist approaches her.

It’s worth noting. He can probably use that if the need arises.

“Thoma…oming…us,” Minho slurs, fading fast.

“We’re looking forward to it,” Janson tells him, even though he isn’t sure the boy can still process words. He wants the satisfaction of saying it, he doesn’t much care if Minho hears. “We’ll be waiting when he does.”

Janson turns his back on them.

It’s a blissful thing, now they’re all quiet. Teresa’s eyes are downcast, but her expression is firm so Janson decides not to concern himself with that for now. He heads back to Ava, striding down the centre of the berg. None of the kids scramble away from him this time. They’re all out cold. The pulse of the engines is louder in the peaceful quiet that’s fallen inside.

She’s still looking at their drugged forms when Janson stops beside her.

“Nicely handled,” she says simply.

He disagrees. Taking out a kneecap would have been preferable, but the praise is what’s important here.

“You were saying about a plan for them, and for myself?”

Ava nods, and she finally looks up at him. Her mind is already back on the mission. “Yes. I will be departing for Denver. I need to address the sponsors and check in on the city compound. With the Scorch facility being left, we will need somewhere to resume the trials and the training build is not adequate. Nor is the reserve base. I will be overseeing upgrades to the city – the idea has already been pitched. I hope for it to only take a couple of months to complete and then all of the subjects can be transported there for continued testing.

“In the interim, you will remain in charge of the reserve facility and all of the subjects here will be under your protection.”

Janson blinks.

He cannot, in that first instant, decide if this is good news or not.

On one hand, it gives him the authority and freedom of a second entire base. It’s something he’d dreaded he may not get back after Thomas’s initial escape. The little shit could have cost him his position. He has a bullet ready for the boy when this is all over. A distinct plus is that it leaves him in charge of these kids – at least one of whom he knows Thomas will be looking for.

On the other hand…

“So you will be overseeing the repurposing of WCKD’s main headquarters and I will be babysitting in the middle of the Scorch?”

“You will be playing a vital role in what is to come,” Ava corrects firmly. “These children are the key to humanity’s survival. They are incredibly valuable and you will see to it that they remain in the reserve facility until Denver is in a condition to hold them.”

She gives him a last, imposing look; head tilted back more out of her own pride than to look him in the eyes at her lesser height.

“They are in your hands Janson,” she says gravely. “Do not fail a second time.”


	2. Janson goes stir crazy

The three bases were built in the early days when the Maze sites were also being excavated. They’re placed in strategic locations across what used to be America. The Scorch facility had been designed to look like a hasty safe zone on the surface whilst keeping the true technological advancement of the base hidden from the subjects. It had done its job well in the time it had been used. It’s a shame that abandoning it now is the best option.

The only reason Janson feels any remorse for that at all is because the Scorch facility is far bigger and better laid out than the reserve base.

The berg finally descends through the air; rotors buffeting the sand and spraying dust up into the twilight sky.

It’s been a long trip but Janson has been chasing Thomas for weeks already so the far more spacious craft has almost been a luxury. Still, it’s with no small relief that he strides down the ramp as soon as it hisses open when they touch down.

The air outside is heavy and thick, still rippling up from the sand in waves left over from the heat of the day. The low atmosphere is an annoyance, harder to breathe in, even without the additional factors of deep sand dunes and grit in every fold of clothing. Janson misses the air filtration systems of his old domain; he already knows the ones here will not be so efficient.

Silhouetted against the fast-falling night is the reserve base.

It’s the only thing as far as the eye can see; something crooked and sad looking spearing up through the sand in a collection of mismatched, jagged angles. It’s sheltered in a hollow several yards away, silent at the distance but probably humming with the same sound of generators that the Scorch facility used to. A large set of security doors stand open to an entry hold and tiny strip lights glow like stuck fireflies, lighting up the floor inside.

Already the berg is being approached by the small skeleton crew that are stationed at the site to oversee it.  A few of them are on foot, staggering through the banks of sand but the others are paired up on small dune buggies, nicknamed Duners by most of the staff. They’re steel roll cages, the motors wedged at the front of the welded chassis and four wheels placed as far apart from one another as possible. They were clearly called ahead, because they’re all in uniform, all prepared for their arrival.

Janson is pretty sure it’s a miserable life, but at least the Flare’s chances of reaching them out here are slim. They have that going for them.

 _Us_ , he reminds himself sourly a heartbeat later. He’s going to be out here too.

Two people pull up at the bottom of the transporter ramp, cutting the engine to a small Duner that’s towing a flatbed trailer. Its on caterpillar treads; the spread designed to prevent it sinking into the sand.

“Get them off and loaded up,” Janson barks across the gap, jabbing his chin to indicate behind him. “Into the holding levels as fast as you can.”

“Yes, Sir,” one of them says promptly.

He jumps down from the buggy alongside his co-worker and the two of them make hasty tracks up into the berg, unfolding a travel stretcher between them. Another buggy pulls up and a third person gets off to go and help.

Moments later, Ava appears at his side. The thick collar of her puffed coat is turned up despite the heavy atmosphere but she’s perfectly unruffled. Even after the long trip with limited space to rest and nothing comfortable to hand, her bun is still perfectly in place, makeup pristine.

Night is falling again after the long wait and soon the pressure will lift and draw in a chill. It will be welcome, at least for a while, but this world is unbearable even at night.

“Let’s go,” Ava says.

Chewing back on another tick in his jaw, Janson follows her down the sand slope and towards a waiting Duner.

.

The base is fortified, though less well made than the last Janson had governed. It was never intended for anything more than short, intermediary stays as necessary. The holding levels are cramped with the sixty children that are brought in, all still unconscious. The generators are being taxed with getting up the air filtration systems, the climate control and lighting for all the floors, not just the tiny section for the crew quarters.

The building feels like it’s been made from shrapnel.

In all honesty, to cut down costs which could have been better used in the Maze construction and the primary labs, it possibly has been. It’s an oddly shaped bunker from the inside, too. The walls are a patchwork of mangled metal sheets, welded unevenly together, corridors sloped and twisted to fit into the outer shell.

The layout isn’t ideal either. The holding levels are underground but that is the best thing about the design. The control rooms are across the complex from the staff quarters, which are located right above the power hub and its constant buzzing of electrics. All of the dune buggies as well as their small stock of artillery are located in the main cargo space near the ground level entrance.

The entire thing sets Janson’s teeth on edge.

Eight kids escaped from the Scorch facility which was far better controlled, made and mapped out with more staff and more provisions to supposedly contain the subjects. This place wasn’t designed to hold onto more than a couple dozen and not long term. The longer they’re here the more likely it is mistakes will be made, and he cannot afford another.

He already hates this place.

.

“This is your show, Janson,” Ava tells him at first light the following morning, her expression completely impassive. She’s back in her white suit and heels again, despite the grunge aesthetic to most of the rooms. “I’ll be leaving as soon as certain things are in place. The rest is up to you.”

So Janson wastes no time gathering all of the staff.

The skeleton crew maintaining the place are neither armed guards nor scientists. They’re fairly close to civilian; middle aged, qualified in a small handful of areas and simply paid to live in the middle of nowhere and make sure the base remains ready for operation. In addition to them are the detail of twenty guards assigned to Janson, a detail of a further twenty assigned to Ava herself who will be leaving with her, and the small handful of scientists and medics who had been called into service for the recapture.

“I’m just going to run over a few simple rules,” Janson says to them all as soon as they’ve gathered in the mess hall. “If everyone would listen to them, things will all go very smoothly and no one will ever need to worry about their jobs.”

He runs through everything he can think of.

The weapons are to be kept under lock and key at all times. Guards must never attempt to handle the subjects alone; the medical and scientific staff must never handle a subject without guards present. Doors must always be kept sealed. The dune buggies must be emptied of fuel reserves after every use, and even more, the wheels clamped or chained. There are key and lock protocols, protocols for administering medications or meals. Every time the main door is opened has to be authorised and logged.

Its how he ran the Scorch facility, but the crew here look overwhelmed. They will adjust and meet his demands or they will be relocated. Janson refuses to underestimate who he’s dealing with again.

But then…it wasn’t dune buggies or locked doors or managing to overwhelm guards exactly that allowed Thomas to escape. It was a small, mousy boy who kept to himself and, of all things, air vents. He may not be able to account for Thomas’s unique intelligence, but the rest he can.

Janson thanks them for their understanding and dismisses them, grabbing hold of a terrified looking Hispanic man in crew uniform before he can follow the workforce out.

“I need you to find me blueprints of this facility,” Janson tells him. “If you don’t know, ask someone who does. By tomorrow I need copies of the blueprints.”

He’ll order every vent welded shut if that’s what it takes.

.

Janson wants to ask when Ava will be leaving for Denver, but he won’t allow her to think that her continued presence bothers him, so he doesn’t ask.

For three days she works long hours in the air conditioned control room, sending off e-mails, speaking over satellite phones and video conferences. She makes frequent trips down to the holding levels but never lets on her purposes for it. Teresa is kept mostly at her side, and particularly away from where the other subjects are detained.

Janson doesn’t ask questions about any of it.

Asking questions means admitting he doesn’t already know, and he’s never liked to allow that assumption. He’s also not sure he wants to put across the impression he much cares. Ava has always been at the helm of this operation and it wouldn’t do for her to think that he has his own ideas about the project. Not yet.

The fourth morning dawns much the same.

The earth is raw and angry outside of the base. The generators are a constant, infuriating hum inside the walls, the climate control already stuttering with the sudden demand on it. The cameras are all still working, none of the guns are missing, the dune buggies are parked up empty every night as requested and there have been no reports of subjects attempting anything.

Janson knows it’s only a matter of time.

When it comes, he’s going to be prepared.

He’s heading for the mess hall to claim his usual morning ration when a guard sweeps up to him. The uniforms are all the same but different units have different numbers on their sleeve patches. This particular guard is one of Ava’s.

“Assistant Director,” he nods respectfully. “Chancellor Paige has asked that you join her in the control centre as soon as possible.”

“As soon as possible?” Janson asks delicately.

The guard nods, a little apologetic. “I am to escort you there, Sir.”

“Of course, I understand,” Janson says silkily, swallowing back on the bad taste the words leave. “Lead on, we mustn’t keep the Chancellor waiting.”

.

Ava doesn’t waste his time.

She’s standing before a wall of glowing blue monitors, the images a little jumpy thanks to the old wiring. Her immaculate bun is in place, her blonde hair silvered in the cool electronic light and wearing a white skirt suit as usual.

She turns to him as the door slides shut, closing the guard outside. The air is stagnant inside and Janson thinks that’s less to do with lack of ventilation and more to do with the atmosphere surrounding the two of them. Sometimes Janson wonders if the remains of this desolate world are big enough for the two of them.

“I’m leaving this morning,” Ava tells him without fanfare. “The arrangements have been made. The berg will fly me to the city and I should be back in contact with you by the end of the week. I’m anticipating a two month schedule but as I haven’t been to the city for a while its possible things will take a little longer to…establish. I will keep you informed.”

“I appreciate it,” Janson says. Anything else in response to that is too dangerous even if it feels like something crawling under his skin to defer the authority. Instead he touches on a new topic. “The berg – will it be sent back out?”

Ava shakes her head. Her hands are clasped primly in front of her. “No. It will remain in the city.”

Janson feels the tick in his jaw return, the pulse at the back of his eyes, and irritation like a hot spark. She intends to strand him here.

“And if we should need to evacuate?” he asks, trying to keep his voice agreeable. “The berg really is th-“

“It is a military grade, large capacity, long distance airborne transportation vehicle,” Ava says. The look she gives him is imperious, unmoved. “Leaving it here would be ill-advised.”

Janson very nearly opens his mouth to protest – but quickly clamps it shut again with such force he feels his teeth grind together.

He almost broke his own rule. Never underestimate his enemy again. It doesn’t matter that he’s sure – absolutely sure – that those kids couldn’t steal a berg. None of them have a clue how to operate it, and even if they could suss that out, they would need to escape the base first. But that is not the point. The point is that he will not even allow them the chance to attempt it.

Ava is right – much as the knowledge grates at him.

A berg is a hybrid with a vast fuel supply to assist the solar powered systems, and it has the ability to carry a lot over a long distance. If, by some slim miracle they _could_ get to one, the results could be devastating to WCKD in its entirety and to his job especially.

Thomas evaded him for weeks based on nothing but determination and intelligence, having left with nothing at all. One day he’ll have the boy at his mercy to dig all the answers as to how he managed it out of his head. For now, he resolves to extend even his own mounting estimations. It’s better to be cautious. The boy could be capable of so much more than what Janson has seen.

He hates it.

He hates giving the little shit this much credit. He wants to write him off, wants to always think of himself as smarter but he _can’t._

“Of course,” is what he says to Ava instead. But the thought of being simply left here with no contingency burrows into him like a parasite, corrosive and festering. She terminated fifty of her precious children to cover up an escape. He refuses to end up the same way.

“Might I perhaps suggest leaving the chopper at an outreach,” he tries instead. “Somewhere concealed but within range for the Duners? In case of…emergencies.”

The area is long abandoned, but many relics of the world remain, and abandoned structures like skyscrapers are convenient when necessary. A chopper is smaller to hide away, and if kept beyond the horizon line of the base, it would not pose the same threat in the event of an escape.

Not that there will be an escape.

Ava tilts her head, her eyes sweeping across the floor as she considers, before she nods. “Very well. It’s reasonable. I will need a brief log on the precautions you undertake for its security but I see no reason it cannot be allowed.”

Janson is very careful to not let on his relief. It wouldn’t do for her to know that an aerial vehicle is of importance to him. Instead, he clears his throat, “Is there anything else we need to discuss?”

“Just one last thing,” Ava says. “Teresa will be coming with me.”

That is a slight surprise.

Janson carefully conceals it from her keen eyes, keeping his gaze level and frank. He had assumed Ava was keeping Teresa close to train her up to take over in this observational role of the base once she left. Janson was looking forward to that a little.

Teresa might prove more malleable than Ava herself. There was a potential in her that Janson could have better studied without the Chancellor hovering.

“Accompanying you?” Janson says slowly. “To the city?”

Ava nods. “Indeed.”

And then she deflates a little. The change makes her seem more human. It’s a rare glimpse and Janson makes a note of it. When she looks up again she looks…sad, perhaps, or maybe just conflicted.

“Teresa has most of her memories back, but they are clouded. The swipe was a risk she understood. The problem is that while her memories of her mother and our cause are returning, she will always carry with her the memories of a life with Thomas, and those few days in the Maze when she really was one of them.

“We were able to obtain Minho again. He and Thomas were close, even in such a short time and I do not want Teresa to be conflicted in the trials that are still to come. We still have our goal. She needs to be focused on that and I fear that being around the subjects, particularly any she may have known will only cause problems.”

Janson can agree that makes sense. He finds himself looking to the brighter side. He may have lost an opportunity to manipulate Teresa, but it does mean he is being left solely in charge of the base.

There is, he thinks, a greater opportunity in that.

.

Ava, Teresa and the Chancellor’s personal guard detail all load up into the berg shortly following the half hour set aside for the breakfast rationing.

The rotor blades are louder when Janson is outside the vehicle, sending swirls of sand up into the air; coarse, angry grit that tears into his coat as he stands to see them off. It lifts off of the dunes, sunlight sliding along the black bodywork, reflecting in arcs thanks to the solar absorbing technology. The feet plates fold up and the fired up engines singe the sand, the smell bitter. And then it’s moving away.

Within just a few minutes the sky is empty again, the desert settling back to earth and the sun beating viciously down.

Janson turns back for the base.

Now to really begin.

.

A week later, as promised, Ava puts in a video call to the control room.

She arrived in good time but this is her first check in. She looks pristine as ever, seated at a wide glass-surface desk in a glass-panelled office, projected with life-like precision into the hologram field between the interface panels. It brings back memories of a similar meeting in another place when he felt like his power had been infallible.

But the control had been a lie. As he stood there, telling Ava he had everything in hand, Thomas had already been convincing the others they had never been rescued. Others trusted him easily. It was a problem, and an annoyance.

For now he sidelines the thought.

Janson provides the Chancellor with the update that she expects. Nothing has happened – no reports, nothing suspicious, no escape attempts. The new rules of the base have been adhered to despite how intimidated some of the original crew seemed at first. She nods along, her expression quite fathomless, right up until he’s finished.

And then he asks for news of Denver, because she expects it.

“It’s coming along well,” Ava tells him, throwing a glance behind her, to something that is beyond the field of reception for the video call. “Work has already begun on the building here and so long as we can avoid any serious setbacks or probing questions from the sponsors, everything should run smoothly.”

“You believe that?” Janson asks her. “The boy is still out there.”

Ava sighs deeply, her fingers toying with a pen on her desk. “Thomas won’t give up,” she says, an undertone that is both proud and weary. “Not now. The best we can do is be prepared; make it impossible for him to leave if he manages to get in.”

“You’re speaking like it’s an inevitability,” Janson observes.

It’s not that he disagrees as such – he’s constantly reminding himself not to underestimate. He’s already had the crew weld on all the air vent covers. But there are still limits. There has to be. He cannot live if he’s constantly overestimating that little shit either.

“He has no idea this base even exists – it was never marked on any map,” Janson points out. “And even if he thought to look for Denver on one, it would take him months to reach it across the Scorch.”

“But we have Minho,” Ava reminds him. “So he will come.”

“Very well,” Janson says. He can feel his headache building yet again. “Is there any news of the termination from the Scorch Facility?”

Ava sits straighter in her chair and her voice lowers.

It’s precaution only. Janson knows Ava well enough by now to be well aware she doesn’t play lightly with video call security. No one is tapping into this.

“There was some…dissent,” she begins, “among the staff responsible for the harvesting procedures. A couple of them walked out when they were passed down their orders to terminate.”

“Walked out?” Janson asks, mildly intrigued.

WCKD is a company with a lot of money, a lot of profile and a lot of benefit to its employees. People working for them didn’t usually leave lightly.

Ava’s expression is drawn. She looks like she’s been running this through her mind for at least a few days now. “Three,” she confirms to start with. “Well. One. Two of them refused to shut down the life support and asked to be reassigned. The third one refused and handed in a resignation right there.”

Ordinarily this was a situation in which they would either do their level best to talk around the employee – mostly with promises or bribery – and if that didn’t work, blackmail usually did the trick. In the event that failed, it was a careful balancing act of hush payments to keep WCKD’s secrets from being spilled or whether it was better, safer, in the long run to just put a bullet in them. It often depended on what, exactly, they knew.

But Janson, head of security, had not been there to handle this.

The Scorch facility closing down meant they were being put onto minimal staffing; medics and scientists enough to oversee the evacuation of the data with a guard detail assigned. They might be armed soldiers, but so many of them prove they don’t have the constitution to do what’s needed. It leaves Janson with a concern.

“This person that resigned - where did they go?”

“We don’t know,” Ava admits, which confirms the fear. This ex employee – a scientist if they were assigned to the harvest team – is somewhere out in the world and they know vital information. Damaging information. “It’s not ideal,” she says.

“Is it not?” Janson asks acerbically.

“Careful, Janson,” Ava tells him, eyes flicking up to him with a stiff coldness for a moment.

“Forgive me, Chancellor,” Janson backtracks, yet finds he can’t quite keep the questioning from his tone. “But this employee could have gone anywhere.”

“There are not many places left he could survive,” Ava disagrees.

There’s something odd in her voice and she’s glancing off to the side again – perhaps a window in the city compound. Janson misses windows, but he also doesn’t care for a view of the Scorch. He just feels restless; tight and haggard in his own skin.

“You think he’ll head for Denver,” Janson guesses.

“It’s the most likely course of action,” Ava nods. “He’s aware of its location, and that it has a population…it has more sense than trying to survive alone, especially as he will have learned the fate of the Right Arm.”

It’s a solid theory, Janson can give her that. And it’s one all based on base instinct for self preservation; wanting to survive. If this spineless scientist had any delusions of stopping WCKD or helping more kids because of what had been asked of him…there’s definitely no where else he would go.

“Who was the employee?” Janson asks. He doesn’t like being out of the loop. The chances that anyone might turn up at his door for a Trojan operation are slim to none, but Thomas taught him to prepare for even the most unlikely eventuality.

Ava seems to agree. “I’ve sent you his file,” she says. “But for now we must move on. I have a meeting soon. After the resignation and this subsequent disappearance, the harvest project was successfully aborted. The children have been respectfully taken care of. It was a loss we had not hoped for and that makes every one of the kids under your protection even more valuable than they were three years ago. No harm must come to them, Janson.”

“Of course not,” he agrees, choking on his own faux sincerity. “They are tended to throughout the day. The holding levels provide them with what comfort we can afford. But we are not taking unnecessary risks.”

“Good,” Ava says shortly. “Now, the equipment is en-route to the training base, along with the majority of the staff. There it will be properly logged in and I anticipate some more of our medical personnel being reassigned to you within the next couple of weeks.

“They can help with managing and observing the subjects while we work out how to restructure the project.”

“Restructure? The building, you mean?”

“No,” Ava says, regretfully. “The harvest was not yielding the results we had hoped for. We discussed this. The serum extraction was slowing, failing. I don’t have time to go over the particulars now but I will be sending you a team who can continue their research while we’re waiting to relocate. Time is of the essence as always.”

“Then that’s all?”

“For now,” Ava says. “I have concerns for the city, too. Since the walls were built over the past years the population beyond its boundary have grown restless. There’s poverty across the world now but for them it’s worse – they can see the wealth just beyond their reach. It needs to be monitored; the ideas of rebelling cannot ever be allowed to become a movement. I have people keeping their eyes open.”

With that she sits back again. Her eyes dart to a clock on the reflective surface of the desk. She taps her pen. “Time is up. I’ll be in touch, Janson.”

Before he can reply she presses a button and the electronic image of her flattens into a panel between the two holoprojectors and then scrolls up into a slender beam of blue light. It blinks out and Janson is left standing in the control room alone.

There’s an unopened file on the monitor used for inter-company communications but Janson can leave that for now. He knows enough, and though he feels Ava to be too soft on the subjects, he has learned better than to overlook her insight when it comes to predicting people.

For now, he has other things to get on with.

.

As promised a little over a week later, a berg drops off a small team of nine scientists, two more medics and a cargo of equipment and data logs.

They’re assigned a mostly unused floor where there are direct elevators to the holding levels and the doors are security access only, heavy and auto-sealing.

There can be no room for acts of rebellion or escape if subjects are moved between the floors.

To be extra certain Janson orders the two elevators to be triple checked for weaknesses and has the ceiling grates welded shut.

He will think of everything. He will not be outwitted again.

.

Janson has been running the reserve base for three solid weeks on the afternoon when he is radioed by a guard to oversee something in the holding levels.

He doesn’t go down to them very much.

In part he would rather not be around the subjects. It was grating enough the first time, needing to play a benevolent host to their insipid traumas. The world was harsh; they had to learn that somehow and they should be thankful that WCKD had actually kept them from the worst of it for years.

The Mazes had filtered air systems, and were located in far off reaches. The Flare couldn’t reach them there; a deliberate element of the project Ava was seeking to run. Besides, of the population left in the world, many were unable to find enough food, shelter or supplies to survive. The Mazes provided everything.

They had been spoiled.

But mostly he doesn’t go down to the holding levels because it means that his visits inspire a certain level of fear. It wouldn’t do for them to expect him, to desensitise to his presence. No. He enjoys the way they all flinch away, lower their eyes, try to blend into the walls on the mere two previous occasions he’s deigned to step down there.

It’s about time they learned they have a place.

“What is it you need?” he barks into his handheld transmitter, already leaving his office on the upper floors, head buzzing as usual with the dull, insistent hum of the generators.

The radio crackles between his fingers.

“Just looks like tool marks, Sir,” the guard on the other end says. “the toilet system lids, the drains in the showers and one vent in the rec room.”

Janson feels his blood run cold; ice-water in his veins.

It’s happening.

They’re trying to break out.

The feeling stings, burns, slides into a prickling kind of fever and his nerves zap. His head pulses behind his eyes and his steps quicken, the metal of the warped floors sounding loud all down the hall as he storms towards the stairwell.

It’s not happening again.

He thumbs the receiver button of the radio so hard he thinks he hears it crack.

“Gather them all up. All sixty, get a full detail on them. No one moves. I’m on my way.”

He barely hears the ‘Yes, Sir’ issued in response. He’s barrelling for the stairs.

Dark, twisting malice blossoms in his chest, scraping on the inside of his ribs. The bolt of paralysing fear honing into anger that’s ready to consume.

How dare they think to try again under his nose.

.

The holding floors are simple. Locked dormitories of just a few people at once with the bunks welded down. They are allowed out for set hours, the communal bathrooms – one for each gender – are monitored from outside only and a rec room is their main hub for interaction throughout the day. Janson would gladly leave them locked in and pass them food through a cat flap but Ava has her ideas.

The freedom she affords them, even locked onto two levels beneath the earth, is a concern. It’s more risk, more variables, more potential for mistakes, for something to be overlooked. It’s more chance of something like this.

A guard is waiting for him when he steps through the security door into the hallway of the Subjects’ domain. The patch on his arm identifies him as the leader of his unit.

“Show me,” Janson says without breaking stride. That burning, roiling feeling of horror and rage has curdled and gone sour in his gut. The tension feels like a vice closing in on him.

Can’t allow this. Has to stop it. Now.

The guard moves fast. Good.

Janson is led first into the bathrooms. There are indeed tool marks around the drains of the showers; sharp white scrapes and gouges that cut through the cement, the grout and into the old tiles. Next are the toilet cubicles where he finds the same jagged marks. They’re raked into the stainless steel of no less than three of the systems and the seals where they’re fixed to the wall as well.

He can feel his headache pressing firmer into the space behind his eyes, his own blood a raging, pulsing beat that he feels in the grit of his teeth.

What are they doing?

Finally he’s shown to the rec room. The kids are all clustered there.

A full detail of guards – twenty four, all armed – are stationed around the walls. The children all wear company issued clothing; slate grey, stamped with ‘Property of WCKD’ and entirely nondescript. The less individuality they have, the better. Many are frozen, trembling, eyes wide and curled with their friends on the floor. At least a dozen are still standing, looking wary and tense but their stubbornness shines through.

Janson isn’t surprised that one of them is A7.

Minho is by a sunken couch, and there’s a guard just behind his shoulder, eyes trained on the back of his dark head. Janson might give that sentry an extra supper ration. It’s always good practice to reward initiative and Minho certainly needs watching carefully. Stood close to his side is that little brat Aris and behind him, pale hands on his shoulders, is the blonde girl.

The three of them are still sticking close. Janson makes another note of that. Clearly it wasn’t just where they ended up in the berg; staying together is something they choose.

He sweeps his eyes around the room.

Those two are his first concern but he wants to use this time to assess any other potential subjects of note. A boy with a square jaw looks rather fixed and a slight girl with cool eyes seems oddly calm. But there’s nothing in any of them that rings of threat. When he’s satisfied, Janson turns to guard who brought him.

“Watch them,” he says, keeping his voice smooth. There are far more delicate ways to inspire fear than shouting. “Show me where it is.”

It’s an air vent, as promised. One underneath where a metal table is bolted securely down to the floor. The rake marks around the plate are less obvious here, but there are definitely chips and scratches where they’ve tried to use something on it. The welding has held it tight even if the screws – rendered unnecessary – are dented and loose.

The anger – how dare they – pulses hot and quick through his head, blazing out down to the tips of his fingers. He itches to pull a trigger. The sparks of the insult – did they really think he wouldn’t find this? – flood through and he swipes a hand across his mouth as he stares at the evidence of their rebellion. He realises a second later that his hand is shaky and he balls it into a fist.

He stands up, turns his back on the table and does another surveying glance.

No one has moved.

He makes a decision.

“Everyone will be confined to their bunks,” he says silkily. In the ringing, nervous silence, his voice carries. He speaks directly to the guard at his shoulder now. “There will be a twelve hour lock down. No one leaves their rooms and some of the crew will be brought in.”

“Yes, Sir,” The guard nods.

Janson’s eyes land on Aris. He knew about the air vents last time. What might he – impossibly – have worked out this time? He’s had longer. Even Ava must surely agree it’s a justifiable concern. That questioning him is…a simple matter of precaution.

In the drawn out moment he contemplates the best way to explain this to the Chancellor, Minho shifts, stepping across to block Janson’s view of the younger boy. Janson’s eyes leap up to fix on him instead. In the same instant. The guard aligned at Minho’s back flinches up his gun.

Minho twitches as he registers it, but there’s a burning kind of resolution in his expression and he doesn’t look away from Janson.

The cocky little asshole. Who does he think he is?

“I want you to tear the place apart,” Janson says now, feeling the way his mouth pulls into a sneer. His previous failure to predict is a lead rock in his stomach. “Find what made the marks and find out why they were looking there. If they’ve hidden anything I want to have it on my desk by tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, Sir,” the guard repeats.

“These walls and precautions exist for your protection,” Janson says to the room, watching the way Minho’s face darkens. “We wouldn’t want to jeopardise that, now would we?”

He jerks his head to the doorway. “Everyone back to the dorms. Except B1. I think it would be good to discuss some things with him.”

The blonde girl curls her arm around Aris’s shoulders, eyes flashing with wild terror as well as defiance. Minho backs up a step, despite the gun loosely held right beside him. The room ripples with a sudden burst of anxiety.

“Now, now,” Janson says, striding for the exit. “Let’s not do anything rash. It’s just a little chat. No one wants to end up hurting themselves.”

Two guards move in on the three by the couch. Aris flinches backwards into the girl’s protective hold and Minho twists, curling forwards like a jungle cat zoning in on prey. He doesn’t care about the guns. Either he’s not afraid to take a shot – seems foolish – or he believes they won’t use them. That’s also foolish, even if Janson knows explaining it may be a precarious situation with Ava.

Or maybe it’s a third option. Maybe it’s that he feels the risk to himself is worth what he’s fighting for. That boy. That’s interesting. It’s something worth noting.

But as a guard reaches towards Aris, Minho’s shoulder shifting, rocking back to swing – the door flies open.

It rebounds against the wall – concrete down beneath the level of the Scorch – and the dull resounding noise floods the room as hinges scream against the force.

Everything stops.

The guard’s hand is still stretched out towards the kids, Minho’s fist curled up and frozen. Aris’s fingers grip tightly into the loose fabric at the back of the older boy’s shirt, perhaps quelling or perhaps supportive.

But it all freezes as an out of breath employee barrels into the room at full speed, eyes wide and a radio headset askew around his neck.

“Assistant Director,” he gasps.

There’s an instinctive bolt of dread that fires down Janson’s spine, blasting out through his nerves.

No.

He thought of everything. What’s gone wrong?

“Speak,” he snaps.

“It’s the crew from the Scorch facility, Sir. They—They’ve had a break in.”

.

For a second the words just ricochet around his skull.

They don’t mean anything. They don’t compute. He can’t process how this is information at all.

And then it lands with a weight like an anvil and he almost staggers.

They’re still in the rec room. The kids are all wide eyed. Minho’s arm falls, and he’s staring at the communications staff member with something indecipherable etched into his face.

Janson grabs the man’s arm and propels him bodily outside and into the hall.

“Lock down,” he reminds sharply over his shoulder. “Forget the kid. Into their dorms. Now.”

The door slams between them. Janson stalks down to the next door at the far end of the passageway, metal echoing as he goes. He shoves the man through before pressing a button to lock that panel closed behind them as well.

They’re left in the grunge and metal of a subterranean corridor outside of the Subjects’ accommodation and right by the elevators. Industrial LED strips overhead spill pallid light over the mangled walls and the steady, dark whir of machinery still somehow filters down the stairwell.

He can’t escape the fucking generators.

“Explain everything,” he says, his voice now a careful, deadly undertone. “And do it quickly.”

The man is not so well trained as the guards. He’s shaking in his uniform, eyes wide and scared, but he nods fiercely, tapping at a tablet panel in his hands.

“The radio transmission came in just a few moments ago. It was from one of the armed force left behind at the Scorch base. They, well, I think it’s best if you look, Sir.”

The tablet is held out to him.

Janson snatches it.

There, in hues of blue, the image a little grainy, is Thomas. He’s been caught by the still active cameras, looking ragged and worn. Even running on fumes Janson sees and detests the way resilience burns in him.

That is not the boy with him Janson had been expecting, though. The name eludes him, but there’s a dark skinned kid with wide, troubled eyes keeping pace at Thomas’s shoulder.

“This is the transmission,” the tech says, now holding out the radio.

Janson’s fingers press into the tablet for a moment. He doesn’t want to let go of this one image of the kid who’s caused all these problems. He wants to study it for weakness, for a sign that he’s breaking. But he can’t.

Right now, he has a chance.

He hands the tablet back and takes the headset. The replay button is on the earpiece and then, with an electronic shriek, his head is full of the broken recording that sent this man down to him.

“. . .. . . .. .  ..-ain Loading Bay. Two Scorch rats. Probably just trying to scavenge. Keep an eye o-..  . . .. .. . . –esn’t sit right with me. Copy the ca-. . . .. . ... . –ome cameras on them. They know their way .  .. . . . .. .  . Code blue, code blue. They’re munies. Get the unit to close i-. .. .. .. . .  ..-nfirmed ID A2 and A3. Moving to block exi-. .. . . ... .-etain them now. Monitor the Airfield. Out.”

Janson rips off the headset. He can still hear the crackle and pop of the bad signal as the words repeat in his ears.

He is furious.

“How long ago was this?”

“I told you, Sir,” the tech says. “Just a few mome-“

“Not when did it arrive, when was it recorded?”

The man scrabbles for the tablet, tapping into their incoming messages database. The screen flashes a few times before he looks up again. “The recording began an hour and nine minutes ago, Sir.”

“Take yourself back upstairs, right now,” Janson says with deadly quiet. “And patch a new signal in to the guard unit. Tell them Director Janson requests contact immediately.”

The man’s wide eyes, the way they dart from Janson’s and back to the tablet speak of questions or concerns he is not brave enough to voice. He nods sharply, takes the headset Janson holds out and flees up the stairs.

“All locked away,” a guard’s voice comes from behind him, accompanied with the electronic swoosh of the security door closing again. “Why the urgency, Sir? If I’d be permitted to ask.”

Janson turns on him.

“Are you questioning me?”

“Not at all,” the guard refutes. “Hoping to learn, Sir.”

Janson hasn’t got time to consider the truth of that right now. Frankly, he needs to tell someone because he’s surrounded by idiots and he cannot trust them to get a job done right.

“Two boys from the mountain have returned to the Scorch base. No doubt they went looking for their friends. The guards stationed there have taken action but these boys are smarter than you think. They have to be handled with utmost precision.”

The man stood before him nods briskly. Janson turns his back, striding for the stairs. “Get on this, will you? Strip everything down. They’re hiding something. It seems I have other things to see to.”

.

The afternoon is heavy, cloying and insufferable as all the ones that came before it, but this time Janson feels the vast emptiness of the Scorch chafe under his skin.

The first thing he does is send out two people in one of the Duners. Their task is to cross the sand to the outreach where he was allowed to keep the helicopter for emergencies. This, he considers a certain emergency.

Thomas returned. Thomas. The little shit that is the reason he has been sentenced to this hunk of shrapnel in a desert went back to one of their bases.

The outrage burns like a forest fire; quick to light and quick to spread.

He won’t be allowed.

He wants to throw him in a cell, break the boy’s spirit before he tells Ava he has him.

But Janson is here and the boy is far away from his clutches. He’s relying on too many variables between the two of them.

He tries to contact the base again from the radio room but the signal drops in and out, and no one seems to be responding. That sends cold flashes of dread through his blood.

The helicopter is taking too long.

He takes to pacing. He wears a path into the radio room, listening to the static bleat of the signal. He storms the base, the grated floors and warped pathways clanging loudly under the furious fall of his boots. He laps the control room, the frozen cctv image of Thomas thrown up on to every single glowing monitor in there so he can study it.

The desire to drag his hands through his hair, to slam a fist into a wall is high. But he won’t. He will not let this brat pull him apart. He won’t let anyone see that one teenaged piece of shit has gotten under his skin. He’s prepared. He’s in control now. He knows what to expect.

He will not be outmanoeuvred again.

He won’t.

Finally there’s a knock on the door.

The woman who pokes her head in looks timid but she keeps her eyes up and doesn’t delay with her purpose. “The bird just arrived, Sir. It’s in the Airfield.”

“Perfect,” Janson says. He moves past her. “Please alert the officer in charge of the armed unit that they are to oversee the base until my return.”

“Right away, Director,” the woman says.

And then she’s gone, rushing down the corridor away from him, her starched uniform pants – also slate grey – rustling in the metalwork acoustics.

It takes a stagnant, off-kilter moment for Janson to realise he’s still stood in the doorway, truly alone.

The chopper is here. He’s wasting time. Why is he wasting time?

He doesn’t stop to consider it. His headache is back, the pulsing in his temples, the itch under his skin, stinging in his hands. He wants a gun. Wants to pull a trigger.

He pushes the thought away.

He doesn’t remember getting to the main doors of the Loading bay – this one far smaller, cluttered and generally less satisfactory. He doesn’t remember climbing into the helicopter, the overheat rotors already churning up a storm in the sand as it waits on the half-buried platform. He doesn’t really remember the take off, sitting down, putting on his headset or watching the reserve base fall over the horizon.

The next time he honestly thinks about something, it’s when his headset crackles to life.

“Pardon, Sir,” the pilot says to him. “The bird’s just picked up a radio signal. Its…its source is marked as the old facility.”

Janson’s heart lurches, constricts like it’s trapped in a vice.

“Patch me through.”

The pilot does so. Janson hears the whistle as his headset changes frequency and then there’s a fractured voice on the other end.

“Assistant director Janson?”

“Report,” he says, wasting no time for pleasantries. “I’m in the air, heading for you now. The subjects – do you have them? Are they contained?”

There’s a pause. And the static hum of the radio fills everything he knows of the world. His hands sting again and – wait. It’s not an itch for a gun that’s pulsing, white hot and sharp. It’s not even in his fingers.

His knuckles are bloodied.

It’s not a horrific injury, the blood already flaking dry and stiff between his fingers. But it’s a realisation that comes with horror and hatred. He thought he’d been better than this, thought he’d contained himself.

He doesn’t even remember punching the wall.

It’s a failure. It’s Thomas getting under his skin.

“I’m afraid not, Sir,” the guard in the radio says. “There was…an occurrence. One of our numbers is down. They escaped.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ummm....
> 
> Janson isn't handling things the best.


	3. Janson on House Arrest

The news of the escape hasn’t reached the reserve base, but Janson storming back through the loading bay less than a full hour after leaving says enough.

Something went wrong.

No one wants to ask what.

The failure burns. It’s a twisting, snake-like entity that roils in his gut, sickening. Thomas had been close – had stepped back into their grasp – only for their own guards to fail. They will be reprimanded. He will see to it.

He will also have them send all copies of camera footage, radio transmissions and full reports from anyone who had the slightest bit of contact with the boy. He wants enough to build a full recreation of the events from this remote location. He wants to know every step Thomas took in that old facility, every time he so much as breathed.

The boy will know better by now, surely, than to go back there again, but educating the staff left behind is a necessary measure all the same. They will be debriefed.

There were some injuries; a knife wound, some concussions, a gunshot injury. But those are negligible. The death is not so easily swept aside. They are one man down. Woman, actually.

She was one of Ava’s remaining science department personnel. A small crew had been stationed there for just four more days, closing out all the archived data and overseeing its secure disposal. They were due to be transported to Denver after that. For most of them that would still happen – although with a delay while Janson impressed on them their shortcomings – but not for this one.

Instead, she bled out from a knife wound in a cold hallway.

Janson isn’t sure how to feel about that.

So many of the employees – more than one might think for a company such as WCKD – are squeamish. Someone with the guts to take a life impresses him. But in this instance, the respect is sour, tainted.

There were many people he wished had the spine for it, but Thomas-

Thomas is a problem.

It’s not fear. No. He will not fear that little brat.

It’s simply…troublesome. For many reasons. The fact that Thomas has proved himself capable of killing…it is not fear. He is not afraid of the boy.

It’s not fear to acknowledge with healthy respect the capabilities of a nemesis – not even a nemesis. No, that’s too much credit. The capabilities of this particular…nuisance. It isn’t fear.

Still.

He lands, returns to the reserve base under a doleful moon.

He spends long, frozen minutes staring at the photograph, sent to the tablet in his hands. The crime scene as it was discovered after the subjects escaped yet again. The woman, lying on the floor, the knife still embedded deep into the flesh of her throat, though it’s hardly recognisable through the mess of torn flesh and coagulating blood. It’s pooled, dark and turning tacky around her, high velocity spray on the walls and floor, smears where it’s been disturbed.

It’s a brutal scene.

There’s something entirely without malice about it; it rings instead of shuddering, cold desperation but there is no escaping its brutality.

_And Thomas did this._

Maybe, somewhere, he’s suffering. Somewhere, this exsanguinated life is ripping into the core of who he is; pulling him apart from the inside. Maybe, somewhere, it’ll wreck him; make him easy to bend, to break.

Or. Maybe.

Somewhere he’s…impossibly…standing back up, letting the memory of a dead woman become resolve as the blood on his hands turns into armour. Maybe, somewhere, Thomas is becoming even more dangerous than the boy he knew.

But no.

He’s not afraid.

The tablet cracks between his hands; spidery lines fracturing across the screen, and the blue glow flutters to black.

.

There is a fresh data pad laid in the middle of Janson’s desk.

The office space in the upper levels has been set aside for his personal use, though he finds that any time sat behind a desk is both irritating and wasteful. The little room, much the same as the rest of the base, seems to have been fitted into the outside shape of the walls like an afterthought. No wall is straight and the floor dips. The desk is almost always clear.

So the slim-line piece of tech placed perfectly in the centre snatches Janson’s attention as he sweeps into the room.

It’s the middle of the night.

It’s been just hours since the report of the break in, since he boarded the helicopter and since the fragmented voice over the radio told him of the escape. He’s barely arrived back, greeted in the Loading bay by one of the guards who handed him the tablet. Already the loss of an employee has been announced across the company.

It didn’t take much to get the first picture of that crime scene sent.

He still has people in his pocket at the Scorch facility.

But despite the rush of events and the late hour, and the gnawing of the failure that’s corrosive in his gut, the data pad feels ominous.

He tosses down the tablet he was still holding. The crack across the screen shines under the cold strip lights as it lands with a clatter on the desk. The pad beside it has a dark, glossy screen, but it comes to life as he jabs a finger to the surface.

A file is open on the screen. The report he demanded from his security unit. Of course. The tool marks that had been found, etched into the walls of the holding levels where the subjects were detained. He ordered the place torn apart.

For a moment, his churning rage at Thomas is set aside as fingers of wary dread reach for him through the dimly glowing screen. This is important. He needs to read it now.

He yanks out the chair from the desk, drops into it and pulls it back in. He settles to read.

It’s concise. His men know him and they know better than to drag out the vital information. It covers the process of tearing up the floor tiles in the showers, the process of levering open the toilet systems with a crowbar and then the way a blow torch had to be taken to the previously welded grate in the rec room in order to be sure nothing had been hidden.

And only one thing had been.

_Only one item was discovered. Has been with-held and turned over to AD Janson for inspection to determine if any further action is necessary._

But…there’s nothing here. If they’ve turned over their findings to him they haven’t left it for him.

He will address that later.

The subjects are all still contained with nowhere to go. They are not the pressing issue anymore. He has time where they are concerned. Thomas is, once again, the problem with the highest priority. Thomas, who escaped yet again.

There are more important things for Janson to focus on.

He abandons the data pad on the table and heads for the door.

Offices always were wasteful.

.

“Um, Sir,” the radio tech ducks his head into the door of that same office space days later. Janson has been tearing down the base’s blueprints from the walls. He hasn’t looked back at the desk once. “Chancellor Paige is on a Video conference link for you in the control centre.”

“Is she?” Janson asks, eyes scowling into the dented wall as he crumples up one of the maps between his hands. The paper is worn, soft, degraded, and it tears easily as it crushes. He doesn’t need them now. He’s thought of everything. There was an oversight but it’s caused no damage. None. It’s fixable. He’s going to handle it.

The point is he no longer needs the blueprints.

He can practically taste the nervous indecision from the tech, cloying and irritating in the air. He turns, pulling in a deep breath.

It’s been five days. Perhaps six. No. Definitely five.

It was only ever a matter of time.

“Well I suppose we mustn’t keep her waiting,” he drawls.

The tech nods sharply and withdraws now that he knows the call will be received.

Janson tosses down the scrunched up paper to the desk that he rarely has the time or patience to sit at and storms from the room. He’s been twisted up and aggravated since the fragmented voice on the radio told him about the escape. He’s doing everything he can but it’s no good if others won’t pull their weight. It was an amateur mistake, not being better prepared.

The path down to the control centre is familiar, worn, and very empty. In fact…its not until Janson is halfway there he realises something is off. The generators. The usual, droning noises of them that resonate in the base at all hours are distant, numb, and that…that’s almost more jarring and horrifying than being kept awake as the sounds batter around his skull.

It means he’s growing used to it.

He will not.

Grinding his teeth, Janson stamps his boots extra hard, revels in the metallic clang and clamour of the warped floors, the dissonant echo down the halls. He reaches out and focuses, and there it is – that god-awful racket of the power systems supporting the facility. He holds onto it. He will not adjust.

He is meant for greater things than this deserted heap of shrapnel in an endless desert.

Adjustment is acceptance, and he will not give it.

In the control room the lights on the projector panels are blinking.

Janson crosses to the power console, hits the flashing button on the glass monitor and watches the beams of light blaze between the projectors. In a matter of seconds, the three dimensional image of Ava standing before her glass topped desk has spread to fill the far side of the room.

“Doctor Paige,” Janson greets her, rocking his jaw in order to loosen out a facsimile of a smile. “It’s wonderful to hear from you again so soo-“

“I’m on a short schedule, Janson,” Ava interrupts with a sharp, clipped tone. “So I will keep this brief. I was informed of the infiltration to the old scorch facility within minutes of the breach being discovered. I have been debriefed on everything that occurred and will be taking measures to ensure such an incident as this cannot happen again. They are in motion as we speak.

“But I have also been informed that you yourself abandoned your post here in order to take an unauthorised helicopter to an inactive base for –what? For revenge?”

So this is his debriefing, then.

Janson grinds his teeth, feels that old familiar itch in his fingers; the drive, the pressing want for a gun in his palm. But that old mantra still throbs in his mind; not yet, not yet, and he bites down on the retort he wants to give. He has to bide his time. He has to be in a position of better influence before he can dare to take a stand of this nature.

Not yet. But soon.

“It was not about revenge,” Janson says, feeling the restraint in his own voice like there’s a vice around his throat. “I am the head of WCKD’s security force. I heard about a breach and I acted with initiative.”

“You abandoned the subjects assigned to you to chase after Thomas on nothing more than whim.”

Thomas’s name is a whip crack between them.

She humanises him far too much. The boy is smart but troublesome and ultimately, like all his friends, he is a means to an end and no more.

“He escaped that place once before against far steeper odds,” Janson says, annoyed and fiercely trying to contain it.

Not yet. It’s not the time.

The Chancellor simply does not understand. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t there when Thomas escaped the facility the first time. She wasn’t there when he used air vents, shattered windows, stole artillery and slid right out of his clutches. She wasn’t there when he evaded the quads and the search parties and disappeared with seven others into the Scorch like he was a ghost.

But he was.

She’s underestimating him. Underestimating the boy is dangerous. Janson knows that now. He won’t make the same mistake. Not again. Not again.

Ava lifts a sculpted brow at him, patient but unimpressed with the reasoning.

She doesn’t _know_.

Janson pulls in a breath and it hisses between his teeth, measured carefully. “I felt I had to act quickly. I apologise if the decision seemed rash or if you were caught off guard. Time was…of the essence.”

“Be that as it may,” Ava says, standing off the projected edge of her desk. “Thomas has still escaped, one of my evacuation team is dead and we have still suffered a major setback with the loss of the Scorch facility and the work it was doing. I need to trust that you are here, Janson, doing your job. These kids are all we have left.”

That might be his own tooth cracking.

Janson’s jaw aches but he tips his head, scrapes his face into what he hopes passes as deference and nods.

“Very well, Doctor Paige,” he manages, though the words taste like battery acid. “Then I shall remain here. I will, however, need to be kept informed of any changes and as security is my job, I will also take it upon myself to study footage of the break in. After all, I am sure you’ll be wanting a report on it.”

He lilts it into the trace of a question. Ava, stone faced before him, considers for a moment, before tipping her head the barest amount.

“Wonderful,” Janson says, before she can add any conditions or restrictions to the agreement.

Ava stands, tugging her pressed white sleeves straight before she links her fingers together over the lab coat. “No more unauthorised trips from your station,” she tells him.

Apparently she has decided not to touch on the topic of the break in anymore.

Janson bites the inside of his cheek. He tries to tip his head to her, but he feels strung tight, vibrating with aggravated tension, and it comes out as a jarring little twitch in the back of his neck.

“I just hope none of my units have urgent need of me should I be unable to contact you first,” is what he says.

Ava doesn’t even level that with a response.

“I have a meeting,” she replies instead. “And you have a job to do. See to it that it’s done.”

She steps back around the desk, her usual white heels clacking against the floor. The sound rings with such accuracy that it’s like she’s really in the room. The technology is almost flawless. She’s reaching towards her own control panel and disconnecting the call before Janson can ask her any of the remaining questions teeming in his head.

Is Denver almost prepared? Is Teresa still sided with them? Have they found any better way to extract the serum? Has there been any other report or sighting from the survivors on the mountain?

But he swallows them back like a bitter pill.

That’s okay. It’s a workable situation.

Ava may be his superior, but there are other loyalties within the company, ones that can be more easily bought or persuaded. There will be other ways to answer those questions.

.

It takes just over a week after the break in for Janson to finally receive all of the data he requested on it.

Most of it he obtains with his clearance as the head of WCKD security. Other bits, the controlled parts, the ones deemed irrelevant, he gets through more covert channels. There are people still stationed at the Scorch base who are loyal, who have a clearer idea of the big picture. They’re people who understand the value of being on the right side.

They provide the rest.

Janson may have been stranded out here with the helicopter on a strict watch list for activity and orders to remain put, but he will not be idle.

He has a job.

He is the head of WCKD’s security force.

He shuts himself into the control room with strict orders that he is not to be interrupted. Even the original crew know better by now than to question him.

“Okay come on, come on,” Janson mutters to himself, finally going through the files on the system. “Let’s see what you were doing in there.”

The room is full of glass monitors, arranged in grid patterns around the walls, and all across the central desk, each a wash of cool blue in the otherwise enclosed, dim space. Janson sets up individual camera feeds from the old base on each screen. They flicker as the connection takes, and then stabilise. Old, familiar halls are surrounding him, as seen through the fish-eye lenses.

Things were simpler back then.

Or, perhaps they weren’t. Thomas did escape him there, after all. Perhaps Janson should be glad for the relocation. This facility might be a struggling wreck but it’s small enough that it can be secured with less staff. And so far, nothing has gone wrong.

He’s reminded of the supposed item found in the holding levels after the place was ripped up. The item he still has not seen. But he pushes it aside. They’re still here. No escapes.

Things are going well.

.

Janson spends the better part of a week in the control room.

He watches the recorded footage on a loop. He rearranges the feeds so that the hallways line up with the monitors they’re projected onto. He learns the steps that the boys take – can follow them from one glass screen to the next, to the next, to the next. They’re good – they evade a lot of the cameras and are good at keeping to the edges of the view in most of the others. But in some places they don’t have a choice but to step into the path of the cameras, and in some they don’t appear to realise they’ve been caught.

It means that his collection are stilted and complex. Some have just flashes of the group, in others they’re recorded for long moments.

There are things that nag at him.

There were only five of them. Just five people who got in and got back out again, all in such a small timeframe. And for most of that…Thomas had been split from three of them.

Janson has studied it. He knows it well.

There’s a dark skinned girl and two boys, one of whom Janson recognises instantly. With the lanky build and the flurry of blond hair it’s easy to place him as the boy who once put himself between Janson and Thomas in the canteen of that same facility. Janson pulled up his ID later as well.

A5. The Glue. Newt.

He doesn’t particularly care about the other two. The girl is from Maze B, he knows that, but Thomas hasn’t known her long enough for her to be of any leverage. The other boy was from another Maze and much the same as the girl, he is of no use in playing Thomas.

The three of them are seeking something, and it’s clear to see they don’t find it. It’s not just because the camera on the Loading Bay catches them all leave in a sand blasted truck.

No.

It’s the way their expressions cloud and collapse as they enter what used to be one of the harvest chambers. They find it empty. Abandoned. And the way A5 crumbles with the realisation is preserved in the grainy film.

The smug glee that Janson feels at that faltering spirit and sharp pain is a welcome balm to the days he’s spent wrung with nerves.

Whatever they wanted they didn’t get it.

And he suspects he knows what they wanted.

Minho.

Thomas is a separate issue. He seems zoned out, unfocused, flickering with moments of clarity between the times when he apparently has no idea where he is or even what he’s seeing. Janson wonders at first if he’s drugged. But no. That’s not right.

He’s…exhausted.

Extremely exhausted.

That knowledge is both exhilarating and rage inducing. It will be going into his report. On one hand, Thomas, wherever he is, is not handling the events on the mountain well. If he runs himself into the ground it could prove beneficial to them.

On the other, it means he’s already escaped a detachment of fully trained guards whilst running on fumes and barely able to see straight.

And that knots like razor wire in Janson’s veins.

The little shit.

He only has to screw up once.

Or. No. Not even that. He _did_ screw up.

Janson hits the reset, and the footage plays back yet again. He’s stopped counting how many times he’s watched it. But- there. There it is.

The murder happens just off the edge of screen fifteen. He sees the way Thomas’s arm gets coated with blood, the spray from the severed artery as it lashes back at him. The body drops out of view.

And Thomas is frozen. Beside him is A3, the kid they all called Frypan for absurd reasons. They don’t even appear to realise how close to an exit they are. Thomas’s expression is distant and removed.

And then A5 is there. He’s dragging Thomas out.

Janson feels his teeth grind again. It’s really a good thing that a contract with WCKD comes with dental. These little brats are going to make him call it in.

It nags.

He has Minho. He took Minho.

The boy was the one he could reach easiest on that mountain. A truck roared across the camp with its engine like a battle cry in the night, a helicopter bit into the earth and rotor blades spun out, shearing through the world like from a bomb blast. In all that chaos, it became more about grabbing who they could.

Minho is important. He was immune; he is someone Thomas will come for.

But, without being able to pinpoint why, Janson is sure that he hasn’t taken the person who would have hurt Thomas the most.

Not that he can do anything about it now. They’re in the wind. They escaped.

He narrows his eyes on the image of Thomas in the corner of screen nine. The feed is tinted blue but there is no mistaking the dark splatter of blood on the boy’s arm as Newt grabs hold of him, tugging him firmly away without so much as flinching. They’re gone. It’s a missed opportunity in so many ways.

“Where did you go, Thomas?” Janson murmurs to the electronic panel.

He hits the replay once more.

.

The next time he sees Minho, it’s in a tiny steel box of a room, with the boy’s wrists cuffed to the centre of the table between them.

The boy is still dressed in issued clothing, stamped all over with ‘Property of WCKD’. Good. Though…He doesn’t appear affected by it. That’s a shame.

Some of the other subjects have gone to efforts to remove the letters in displays of defiance.

There are camera feeds in the holding levels. Only the bathrooms have no visual monitoring, but the audio is unreliable at best, frequently shorting out or only picking up certain pitches. The kids don’t know that but it will only be so long before they start to exploit it. They’ve already begun prodding for weaknesses.

Perhaps Minho is saving his act of defiance for something bigger.

Janson has to be prepared.

“Minho,” Janson greets him, his tone smooth and light. He drops into the empty chair at the table. “I hope you’ve been treated well since we last spoke.”

Minho stares back at him, stone faced, unimpressed. His eyes are cold; his fingers curled around the length of chain between his wrists and his shoulders set firmly, curved forwards. But there’s a strange kind of patience to him.

He doesn’t look ready to strike. He looks like he’s simply…waiting.

It’s irritating.

Janson is the one who is cool and calm.

He sighs, biting down on the impulse to rough him up a little. The kid has probably never known what being beaten up is truly like. It would do him some good. Give him perspective.

No, no.

Not yet.

This approach first.

“This really would go a lot better if you were willing to discuss things with me, you know.”

Still nothing.

Janson crosses his jaw, rakes his teeth back and forth.

“Alright,” he decides.

He leans forward, plants his arms on the table. Its about dominating space, it’s about impression.

It’s almost more rankling that Minho doesn’t recoil at all. The brat has more courage than sense.

Still, if Minho won’t talk to him without it, Janson is happy to provide…incentive.

“Let me make something clear to you, Minho…if you have nothing to say to the questions I ask - I will walk out that door. I will go down the hall to another room just like this, where a boy that you know as Aris is sitting, much like you are right now. And I will not be asking him any questions.”

Minho’s eyes flash and lift to his own.

Finally. A reaction. Not a very good one though. Minho considers him and that on its own is an insult. Janson will not be tested.

He stands, tosses the chair under the edge of the table and strides for the door.

There’s a thundering crash behind him, something vivid and electric and the room seems to pulse with a wave of fury that doesn’t come from him. The noise ricochets off the walls, resounding loud in Janson’s ears. There’s a raw scraping sound, a shrieking pitch that sets nerves on fire.

Janson turns.

Minho is still chained to the table, but its not standing upright anymore. It’s on its side, the two chairs knocked aside. Minho’s chest rises and falls tightly though he is far from out of breath, furious tension in the cords of muscle in his arms.

There’s a moment where they both wait. It hangs like a lead weight, taught and brittle. And then it drops. Minho swallows, his eyes darting down.

When he speaks, his voice is still fierce. That’s okay. He will break yet.

“What more do you want?”

“Wonderful,” Janson says. He turns from the door, pulls his abandoned chair around and sits back down once again.

Minho visibly debates a moment, and then he stumbles a step to the side and sinks back into his own seat. His arms reach forwards to keep the slack to the table, but the position doesn’t look uncomfortable. Pity.

Janson starts over. “First I’d be curious to know what Thomas’s plans are.”

And it happens again. It’s just like it was in the berg the day they left that scrubby mountain behind. Minho _laughs_. It’s a bitter, sharp sound.

The itch is back. That drive for a gun and a trigger to squeeze until something stops moving. He curls his fingers into a fist instead, pressing blunted nails into his palm until it stings.

“I’m sure you’re going to explain this amusement to me,” he says and his tone is carefully pitched. There is no mistaking this as a suggestion.

Minho scoffs.

“You think I have any idea? I’ve been here and it’s not like we get mail.”

Janson wants to smack him in the mouth for the backtalk. Instead he cracks his neck, feels the sour smirk pull at his lips.

“I’d be careful,” he warns. He rocks his head to the doorway as though the threat wasn’t obvious enough. “Perhaps you’d care to enlighten me about his plans as you last knew them.”

Minho’s jaw is fixed, hate roiling in his eyes.

It’s the choice he’s being forced to make – certainty that Aris could be endangered for the potential that Thomas could be.

It takes another weighted moment. Janson allows it. He’s not in any rush. Finally, Minho yanks sharply once on the chain in his hands and gives in.

“We never had a plan,” he bites. And then, inexplicably, he rolls his eyes. “We were following Thomas. He’s never had more than eleven percent of a plan in all the time I’ve known him…yet somehow…he seems to make it work anyway.”

“What were you doing with the Right Arm?”

“Enjoying the scenery.”

The room goes cold.

Minho yanks the chain again, though he doesn’t look apologetic, and nor does he retract the sarcastic answer. “What do you want me to say?” he demands. “I don’t know what Thomas is doing, or where he would have gone. How would I?”

“So I suppose it would interest you to know that Thomas caught breaking into the WCKD facility he led you out of.”

Minho freezes. His eyes dart between both of Janson’s. He doesn’t appear to be breathing, but then, before Janson can say anything, his whole frame sags.

That’s…interesting.

“You don’t have Thomas,” is what he says, though, and its Janson’s turn to go carefully still. Minho lets out a breath of a snort as he shakes his head. “If you had him, you wouldn’t be here asking about his plans.”

It’s too late now.

He had a weapon and he didn’t use it. He will stay calm. This isn’t a setback. He hadn’t even planned on telling Minho about the break in so its not like he had planned on lying about his capture. This is salvageable.

“I think there’s a more important thing you can take from this, Minho,” Janson tells him. He keeps his voice smooth, this is purposeful. He wants to rattle. “Thomas returned to a place he fought to escape only a few weeks ago. He went back to get you and I don’t think you realise how many opportunities this opens for us.”

Minho shakes his head again.

“You aren’t surprised,” Janson notes.

Minho shrugs. “Should I be?”

“You didn’t tell him never to come after you?” Its mockery, but delicately placed. He wants to incite a reaction.

But this is not going well at all.

“I told him a lot of things,” Minho says flatly. His gaze meets Janson’s evenly. “One of which I knew he’d never be able to do. Doesn’t matter if I want him to leave us and get somewhere safe. He’ll come for us.”

Janson smirks.

It’s touching. This unwavering faith Minho has. Sickening, but touching, he supposes, objectively.

“Thomas doesn’t know where you are. He doesn’t know this place exists and the Scorch is a very large place.”

Minho’s focus doesn’t falter. One shoulder twitches in the smallest suggestion of a shrug.

“Haven’t you underestimated him enough already?”

.

_Haven’t you underestimated him enough already?_

The question rankles even as Janson brushes it off.

It’s still in the back of his mind, a leaden weight in his gut days after he ordered a guard to get Minho out of the upturned interview room.

_Haven’t you underestimated him enough already?_

No.

He underestimated him once. It hasn’t happened again, and it won’t.

.

He’s back in the office.

Everywhere feels claustrophobic. He cannot escape the rumbling noise of the generators, the clamour of the metalwork as personnel go about their business, the hissing whir of the elevators as they shuffle around. The base is too enclosed. The cabin fever of it is setting into his bones.

Inside the climate control dips and starts. There are bursts of time when blasts of cold air power through the vents, only to be followed directly by thick, cloying heat that is almost worse than the open air of the Scorch.

In the past few days, the atmosphere has been dropping.

Janson thinks idly that if their on hand engineer can’t fix the climate control by the end of tomorrow, he’ll probably have to make an example of him. There is no room in this base for someone who cannot do their job.

But it leaves him in the office – a room chosen for its proximity to the ventilation system. The air is clearer here. Usually.

He hasn’t even sat at the desk for…

How long has it been?

Ava contacted him about his actions the night of the break in. He’d been sent the security footage. There had been numerous other small things – updates on protocol, a Duner with a flat tire and some of the lab equipment had dropped out because of a shortage from the electrics. The radio techs had both logged reports of the frequencies going haywire. Input from other bases was coming through spotted at best and there was even interference from mostly unused channels.

It’s stressful and wearing enough, running a base this far out while all of their technology starts playing up but then Janson had received all of the additional data from the break in.

How long had he poured over that?

A few days?

It could have been a couple of weeks.

All he knows now, sitting at the desk and eyeing the glowing display on a panel to the side, is that its been almost a month since Thomas escaped yet again.

The boy could be anywhere, and speaking to Minho yielded him nothing. Janson wonders if, next time, threatening the younger boy in front of A7 will do anything more. It’s hard to say.

The audacity of the answers is still burrowed under his skin like a parasite.

If it’s true and Thomas has never truly had a plan – not a full one, anyway – its troublesome for more than one reason. It makes him harder to predict, for one. And rather more pressingly, it means that if he ever stops to put together more than eleven percent of it – as Minho had offered rather fondly – outthinking him could prove difficult.

Janson does not like to downplay his intelligence.

But he has never been more aware that Ava and Mary had specifically selected the brightest immune children for the Mazes first.

He lets out a sigh, scraping a hand across his face and letting his fist fall to bang onto the desk.

He needs to focus. Focus. Focus.

Wait.

The impact on the desk dislodges the data pad from exactly where he’d left it.

There’s something underneath it. What idiocy. Still. It’s something to focus himself on. It’s what he wants. Just for a while he does not want to think about Thomas and where the little shit is hiding or what he’s planning. He pushes the pad aside. Left in its place, easily concealed under it, is a piece of folded scrap paper.

It takes a second to sink in.

And then. That’s it. The data pad had the report on it from the time the guards had taken apart the holding levels. This was underneath. This was the thing they had reported they had found.

Had anyone ever told him it was here all this time?

Had he ever asked?

He thinks maybe he kept forgetting.

Paper, though. It’s odd.

Fingers tap on the desk, a staccato rhythm, rapid like a tremor. It’s not an outlet. It almost seems to add to the tight, constricting tension in his nerves but now it’s started it won’t stop. He wants to look, wants to know, wants to see. He wants to hold this piece of paper over them in whatever way he can.

But when he reaches out with his other hand, and flattens the paper open against the desk, he freezes solid and his blood runs cold.

There, written into the crease in something that looks like graphite – a basic, old age pencil – is just one line.

_Reject, if you’re reading this? Then I hope I made you bleed for it._

No.

It can’t be. It’s not right, not what he planned, not what he expected-

It’s not what he expected.

It’s not _who_ he expected.

The voice in this note is familiar. She wouldn’t remember, but he does. She grew up with WCKD like they all did. She’s immune, but she had another value, a very different kind; leverage.

He didn’t see this coming.

He was prepared for everything. He was prepared for anything they did. He has been waiting for them to try something, despite the extreme measures in place. No. Not extreme. They’re reasonable, necessary. But he’s been waiting for something in spite of them.

He just never expected this.

This note is not something passed between the brats to orchestrate an escape. It’s not something they discarded to conceal it.

It was left for him to find.

It was left for him to find behind a vent that was sealed up and very obviously scarred. They were smarter than that.

He’s done it. He broke his rule. It’s not just Thomas. It’s all of them. Her as well. He underestimated them. Again.

Janson starts to laugh.

The sound echoes in the office room, bounces off the walls with a tinny timbre and he feels the burst of crazed mirth amplify in his head, his blood moving sluggishly in his ears. It feels like being drugged; the room and all sensation falling away, going numb. Realisation is a spiky sensation, prickling at his skin.

He hates it, hates it, hates.

The laughter won’t be stopped, claws up and out. He slams his fist so hard against the desk that he feels the impact resonate right up to his elbow in a clouded shudder of pain.

One fist clenched, Janson raises his other hand to his mouth, pressing into the stubble of his jaw. He tries to pull back to himself, and the rising tide of hilarity goes cold. It slides seamlessly into chilling dread.

He was meant to see this. It was written for him.

He realised that. Of course he did. But only now does it truly sink through.

For him.

Everything twists up through him and he’s no longer laughing but the echo of it hangs in the air, like the memory is playing on repeat.

They played him.

The words on the paper rip into him. _Reject_. She always knew where to cut. At least now her value as a bargaining chip is done with; there are no parents left to use it on. Disposing of her might be easier than dealing with Thomas. Ava is a problem. She’ll know. She always knows. She’s always fucking watching him.

Janson shoves away from the desk. He needs out. Has to get out. The room is folding down around him.

He slams the door in his wake, leaving the note open where he left it.

.

The halls are too loud, the generators are giving him a headache, the pulsing back behind his eyes and building with every step he takes. The vents are pushing out heat that feels like soup and the clanging of tools is amplified through the shafts as the crew try to fix the issue.

Ava Paige stranded him out here. She stranded him with a bunch of useless imbeciles who couldn’t fix a plug if they tried and thirty teenagers, a handful of which were plotting something – he was sure.

He needs out.

“Open the doors,” he barks at the guard on duty as he strides through the Loading Bay.

“Um-Sir-“

“Immediately,” Janson snaps.

This time the ‘Sir’ is a bolted response of affirmation. Good. A fast learner.

The man moves to a control panel, hastily taps something into the screen and then presses down on the button to work the mechanism.

The doors groan and grind and then pull open.

A gust of wind sweeps in bringing a flurry of dust and grit that spray across the floor. Its dark out but the sky is turbulent, stars blotted from view behind the furious twist of blackened clouds.

“Director,” the guard tries this time. “Sir, there’s a storm brewing. The readings have been going off.”

“Was this logged?” Janson asks.

The man nods, “Yes, Sir. It was. The radio techs have been keeping track of reports and the men in the labs predicted it was heading right over us as far back as a week ago. They…they left the reports in the control centre for you, Sir.”

“Of course,” Janson says smoothly.

He hasn’t seen them. He’s been busy.

They don’t need to know that.

“I just need a moment. Back to your station.”

The guard swallows, but he’s smart enough to not hesitate. He leaves without a backward glance.

Janson steps outside.

The storm is moving towards them already.

He breathes in the faintly charred smell of the Scorch and revels in the air pressure; the way it rests low, waiting for release. The next instant lightning forks the sky, vivid and startling, just touching down on the horizon. Another follows; the strikes splintering through the thick air. And then another. Each one strikes closer, eerie and dangerous and teeming with demons and plaguing thoughts.

The sky becomes a battlefield.

It takes a moment, but the roll of thunder follows. The rocking boom of it gouging through the clouds seems to fall in time with the rapid pulse of Janson’s building headache.

The smell of ozone takes over, sharp and clean.

It’s coming closer.

He’s too caught up. This is the most he’s breathed in weeks. And then – too late – is when he realises there is no space between the lightning strikes and the rolls of thunder anymore. They shatter the sky in tandem and the storm is a malevolent entity all its own directly over his head.

When Janson sees the next strike, it’s almost blinding. Everything swims with unnatural blue and yellow light. He feels the world shudder where the electrical current lashes into the ground. His ears ring and everything turns to white noise in his head. He feels distant, suddenly, like looking down at himself from far away.

The crack of lightning, so close, seemed to crack the world in two, each falling away into its own orbit and him along with it at the place that it broke.

But somehow he stumbles back inside.

The Loading Bay is empty and silent. The lights are too bright, too much. Still the thunder rages on. The metal screams and shudders as lightning fixes on the mangled spires.

There’s no rain. It’s a dry storm. Unusual.

But Janson feels strangely grounded, even as his head throbs and his ears sting and his eyes water.  
  
The smell of burning sand is acrid in the back of his throat for days after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might have noticed this has some similarities to certain other fics....
> 
> That might be because this is a parallel story to @comebacknow 's Talk Me Home and might also connect to @kathsilver 's Call My Name series.  
> Lightning does some interesting things to space and time...
> 
> Other stories that might possibly tie in...well...check the tags and welcome to 11!Verse

**Author's Note:**

> This just in: Janson is a creepy asshole.
> 
> This will be a short story and updates should be speedy :) Just an overview, really, more than an indepth fic. Hope you enjoy!


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